New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.

Hey, isn't that the same screenshot we used for WoW Rookie just two weeks ago? Indeed it is, faithful readers – because frankly, "Who wants my man meat?" is the perfect illustration for today's topic.

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Huge congrats to our second Guild of the Month, the Wildfire Riders of Feathermoon. We combed through all of the entries sent to us over the last 30 days, and the Wildfire Riders came out on top -- not only do they run some exemplary raids, but they are a shining example of fun and interesting RP, and we really enjoyed their one loot rule, too. Read on after the break to find out what it is, and what kind of people make up April's Guild of the Month.

In addition to being featured right here on the site, Wildfire Riders also picks up a raid pack from the good folks at Swagdog.com, who offer hats and t-shirts custom printed with your guild and character information -- the perfect piece of clothing to pack up for BlizzCon later this year. And speaking of BlizzCon, Swagdog tells us that they're going to be there yet again (last year they were giving away custom mousepads), and that they've got some more customized guild gear in the works, so stay tuned. Thanks to them for helping us sponsor this contest -- go head over to their site now to make your own custom guild shirt or hat.

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We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Matticus's UI blog, No Stock UI, takes a look at six different tooltip addons you may be interested in.
• We've talked about the Insane in the Membrane achievement ourselves, but The Unconventional Priest has a guide of her own that may help you out on your quest to become completely and utterly insane. Make sure you check out parts I, II, and III.
• Haven't gotten your hands on your epic flying mount yet? That's alright. Here are some tips on how to make that 5000g with the Art of Soloing.
• Many players are getting deeper and deeper into Ulduar with every passing day. Are you hybrids ready for General Vezax?


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I could not agree more -- of all of the cooking dailies, Cheese for Glowergold is my least favorite. All of the cooking collecting quests usually involve a little shoulder rubbing with people doing the same quest -- Infused Mushroom Meatloaf is another one where it's usually every man for himself down in those sewers. But none of them are more annoying than Glowergold's quest. I don't know if it's just that the respawn time seems longer, or that there are fewer spawn points and more to collect (you need six glasses, which doesn't seem like much as collecting quests go, but it's a lot while doing it), or that there's no specific place to find the glasses (they're littered around tables, usually in restaurants, around Dalaran). But yeah -- every time the wine and cheese quest comes up, I sigh, knowing that I'm going to be standing in the inn straight across from the cheese shop waiiting for a spawn.

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We've been giving a lot of loot card codes away on our Twitter account lately, but the nice folks over at WoWTCGLoot.com didn't think that was enough. They want all of our readers to have a chance at some awesome ingame stuff for free, so here you go: we're giving away not two, not four, but eight different loot card codes today.

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Blizzard EU has a pretty sweet offer to you European players out there: If you like cosplay (and you're good at it) you could win a chance to go to BlizzCon for free. The official contest page states, "All you have to do is create a costume inspired by one of our game universes, pose in it, snap a photo, and send it to us!"

Of course, certain rules apply, contests are never that simple, as I'm sure you've noticed with some of the contests right here on WoW Insider. The contest will begin on May 20th, 2009. It will end on June 22nd, 2009. Submissions sent early (or late) will be discarded. Entries are also limited to individuals 18 or older residing in the following countries:

• France
• Belgium
• United Kingdom
• Luxembourg
• Germany
• Austria
• Sweden
• Finland
• Denmark
• Norway
• Ireland
• Spain


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Huge congrats to our second Guild of the Month, the Wildfire Raiders of Feathermoon. We combed through all of the entries sent to us over the last 30 days, and the Wildfire Raiders came out on top -- not only do they run some exemplary raids, but they are a shining example of fun and interesting RP, and we really enjoyed their one loot rule, too. Read on after the break to find out what it is, and what kind of people make up April's Guild of the Month.

In addition to being featured right here on the site, Wildfire Raiders also picks up a raid pack from the good folks at Swagdog.com, who offer hats and t-shirts custom printed with your guild and character information -- the perfect piece of clothing to pack up for BlizzCon later this year. And speaking of BlizzCon, Swagdog tells us that they're going to be there yet again (last year they were giving away custom mousepads), and that they've got some more customized guild gear in the works, so stay tuned. Thanks to them for helping us sponsor this contest -- go head over to their site now to make your own custom guild shirt or hat.

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PTR 3.1.2 - Build 9901
A new build has been deployed on test servers, a few interesting changes have been made to Lake Wintergrasp.
Quote from Blizzard staffLake Wintergrasp

• Wintergrasp Victory now rewards 3000 Honor. (Down from 5000 Honor)
• Wintergrasp Defeat now rewards 1250 Honor. (Down from 3000 Honor)
• Tower Damaged now grants up to 750 Honor. (Down from 1250 Honor)
• Tower Destroyed now grants up to 750 Honor. (Down from 1250 Honor)
• Damaged Building Reward now grants up to 750 Honor. (Down from 1250 Honor)
• Intact Building Defender now grants up to 1500 Honor. (Down from 2500 Honor) (Note: Currently shown as 150 Honor but most likely a typo)


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Our weekly podcast is broadcasting a special midweek edition this evening -- tonight at 6pm Eastern (so you've got time to listen in before the big Lost finale), we'll be over on the Ustream page doing what we always do: talking about the most popular post of the week. Our good friends and colleagues Amanda Dean and Lesley Smith will be on the show, and Turpster will probably make an appearance as well (given that we can convince him to stay up late enough). We'll be chatting about the latest PTR patch notes, the big changes coming to Wintergrasp, and what Blizzard legal has been up to lately (with both iPhone apps and webcomics). Plus, we'll answer your emails -- you can send us questions, comments, or insights at theshow@wowinsider.com.

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Reader Claire sent us these awesome pictures of a plush Murky, made of felt and fluff. She says she's been a collector of vanity pets since she first started playing WoW, and since Murky is one she'll probably never get her hands on, she decided to make one herself.

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

Lots of good questions this week, and like yesterday's Queue, we have a full set of them today as well.

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You probably remember that a few weeks ago, WoW Insider ran a fan art contest with some pretty sweet SteelSeries items as prizes. We said we were going to show off the winners, and we will! We wanted to contact the winners before we told you who they were, and these things take awhile sometimes. We've now spoken to every single one of them, and it's time to show things off!

Our winners are...

• Grand Prize: Raymond Liang
• First Prize: Shawn Gaston
• Second Prize: Russ Harp
• Third Prize: Connor Murphy


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Today's Moviewatch is a production of FlyingCow Studios. The Inevitable Cataclysm is a trailer for an upcoming PvP film. These things just keep getting more and more finely produced, don't they? Even though it's a trailer, I'm pretty sure that the final video will come to fruition. We'll have to wait and see if it actually lives up to this preview.

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While writing the most recent Shifting Perspectives column and browsing old records on Druid population statistics, I started to wonder about the various factors that play a role in how popular a class becomes. While Blizzard and Blizzard alone has the exact numbers on who's playing what, various fan sites have honed data collection strategies over the years and amassed a pretty impressive pile of numbers. This only got easier when the Armory launched in spring 2007, and by now I'd be surprised if players weren't at least broadly accurate about overall trends. If we can trust what we see, how we do best explain fluctuations in class popularity? Has Arena success (or the lack thereof) been as influential as we think? Is class population an accurate, albeit crude, guide to the overall "quality" of a class at any given moment -- or just a guide to the perceived "quality?" I'd be interested to hear what people think.

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We really hesitate to recommend Dream Shard. Not because it hasn’t increased significantly in value recently (it has) but rather, we hate to even bring it up because of so much flak in the WoWenomic community surrounding the item.

• Way back in January, Markco of JMTC recommended a buy order on Dream Shards.
• In February, he was asked by Tobold to explain why the shards hadn’t increased in price as much as he initially predicted.
• Finally, in April, Markco reissued his recommendation having observed a price spike.

From our own perspective, we first noticed an increase in the price of high-end enchantment materials a little over a month ago when we featured Abyss Crystals as our Hot Item of the Week. The high prices for the crystals we referred to in that post remain today on the three servers we do our regular testing on. Further, also in April, we reported our observations on the impact of patch 3.1 on the WoW economy. At that time we mentioned that our enchanted vellum business was picking up (you might also note that we featured vellums in a previous post as well).

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However, they must have come to the conclusion that Elemental was a bit low, because they're hotfixing in a buff to Lightning Overload. Currently, it has a 7/13/20% chance to proc; when the hotfix goes in ("sometime over the next couple of days"), it will be raised to an 11/22/33% chance, although the tooltip will not change (this will be fixed in a patch).

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As Kafalli of <Guitarred and Feathered> on Frostwolf looked on in horror, a thick hedge of brambles covered in strange druidic symbols grew over the city. The evil warlock's corruption of his graphics card had succeeded, and his beloved was trapped inside the castle, deep inside an enchanted lag storm. Kafalli knew he would have to use all of his abilities on the long, perilous journey to rescue her. Or, he considered, he could just get a new video card. And a new beloved. That would probably be a lot more efficient.

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One of our readers, Eli, wrote in last night with a suggestion for a Breakfast Topic: if achievements had existed in classic WoW, what would they have been? It provoked some back-channel discussion here with staffers wondering how the game would have been different if beating the boss or dungeon wasn't the only thing on your plate:

Me: What would a hard-mode Ragnaros have been like?

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Ah yes, the sinking feeling you get when you see that someone has ninja'ed your guild bank... and it's your guildmaster. Never a good thing, for the guildies, the GM, or the guild. Actually, it's a great thing for the GM -- they get to walk away with thousands of gold (and most of them, through some twisted logic, even think they deserve it). That's why I recommend you do what I do: pack all of your ingame stuff in a virtual mattress somewhere. Sure, your guild might not appreciate a lack of bank contributions, but at least it'll be safe, right?

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Greetings folks, it's once again Wednesday and you know what that means? Yes, it's maintenance day once again. Where did the week go? I must be getting older because time is flying by way too fast.

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